AHC: Have an OTL Extinct Language become the Lingua Franca of the modern world

Andalusian Arabic, it seems to me, would require the least ancient POD and the most recognizable 2019.

If you speak about Mosarabic you don't need anything else as not so succesful Reconquista. Altough if you want that as such language as OTL Spanish even better would be if Muslims manage capture and keep whole Iberia and keep Cordóba as unified country.
 
With any POD you like (before 1900, of course) have a language that IOTL became extinct become the lingua franca of commerce, diplomacy, and education to a similar degree that OTL English is.

For a language to qualify as "extinct" for the purposes of this AHC, it must be a language that disappears completely, not one that leaves behind linguistic descendants. Thus, whilst they both do not have native speakers, things like Latin and old Chinese do not qualify, since their descendants are still spoken today.

However, it may be a language that is still "known" in the present if neither it nor its linguistic descendants have native speakers. Coptic would be an example in this category.

Edit: POD's must ideally be before the extinction of the language--i.e. no resurrecting a language from the grave.
Maybe Arameic becomes a holy text Language of one major world religion. A Manx Pod would be borderline ASB but creative.
 

Albert.Nik

Banned
Well,within the Recorded History, I'd say Latin had a very good chance followed by Greek. A Finno-Ugric empire in Empire in Europe could give that a chance as well. These are the ones I can think of first.
 
Well,within the Recorded History, I'd say Latin had a very good chance followed by Greek. A Finno-Ugric empire in Empire in Europe could give that a chance as well. These are the ones I can think of first.

Quite like the idea of a non-Hungarian Finno-Ugric Empire composed of Finland, Sami territories, Karelia, Kola peninsula as well as nearby non-contiguous territories like Estonia and possibly the western (Livonian+) part of Latvia (notwithstanding an ATL Helsinki to Tallinn Tunnel) roughly featuring similar population numbers to OTL Hungary.
 
It is not.
Akkadian represents (alongside Eblaite, which some actually class as a divergent dialect of it) the Eastern branch of the Semitic language family, while all other known Semitic langauges living, dead, in suspended animation or resurrected, belong to the Western branch. This is among the least controversial points of Semitic historical branching, actually, as the distinctive features of Akkadian especially in the verbal system (but also, phonology and syntax) set it quite apart from the rest of Semitic in a very recognizable way.
Some forms of neo-Aramaic spoken in Mesopotamia and surroundings, such as neo-Mandaic, exhibit quite detectable substrate influences from late dialects of Akkadian, but they are not their descendants (as did earlier Aramaic varieties in the relevant areas). Akkadian also left an imprint on other forms of Aramaic and many other languages (Semitic or not) with which it had contact, but it is believed to have become entirely extinct, even as a written language, by the second century CE at latest. Its latest known derivates (Late Assyrian and Late Babylonian) probably had disappeared from ordinary spoken usage centuries earlier.

Do you not consider Mehri and Soqotri as southern Semitic? Or Amharic and Geez?
 
Kushano actually spoke Bactrian with a Greco-Bactrian Alphabet which still qualifies as an extinct language and a curious case of culture mixing. You could have seen the Kushans project power up into Central Asia, protect the Tocharians from Turkic invasion and repel the Muslims when they march east. I'm imagining Afghanistan as a well protected natural fortress guarding India and extending over Greater Khorasan possibly until the Mongols arrive but they, for all their brutality, tended to assimilate after a time so Kushan culture, language would be preserved in Afghanistan and Central Asia and it would be prominent in India as well. Buddhism would do well too, having what is in effect a continuous theocratic empire from it early expansion. It would be a fusion of Mahayana and Vajrayana sects that would be predominant in Kushan territory and East Asia which they would have helped convert, which Tocharian assistance.

Another scenario is that the Tocharians somehow, perhaps with, say, Scythian help, manage to conqueror China and establish an influential dynasty or explore and settle new lands on the frontiers. They could survive that way, not 100% certain but the chances improve. Come and have a look at this: https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ti-the-scythian-redhairs-of-east-asia.459451/



With a surviving Kushanshahs, Islam perhaps does not occur, at least in the same setting. If the Kushanshahs do not restrict the rise of Islam via butterflies, then I cannot imagine the classical Kushan empire surviving to actually face the Umayyad. Few dynasties last 630 years. Perhaps, a continually reforming Kushanshah hegemony of sorts that is able to defend its northern border to arising empires such as the Hepthalite and Rouran or Gökturk, would have some sort of ability to halt the invasion.

That being said, the main issue for the Kushanshahs and this scenario, their continued prosperity depends upon defeating the Sassanids, an energetic power and find a means by which to recover from the decline of the Han Dynasty and the Silk Road trade links. With this said, a sort of widespread Buddhism in the west and east, the Kushanshahs could place their languages and culture as a sort of intermediary between east and west and a unifying principal if you like.

Converse to this and more western oriented, would be a survival of Indo-Greek states and Greco-Bactrian states as well as Greek rule in Iran, could allow for the Greeks to assume the position of the Kushanshahs and link the east to west. In this case, the Greek could become a sort of Asian Lingua Franca.
 
I'm surprised Gaulish hasn't been mentioned. It's easy to imagine Mediterranean culture, whether Classical or Carthagian or whatever being transmitted northward through a La Tene culture lense via unconquered Gauls or Druid based religious thought forming the religious foundation of an atl civilization.
 
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Do you not consider Mehri and Soqotri as southern Semitic? Or Amharic and Geez?
Short answer: yes, as a simplification.
Long answer: the current prevailing view (though not, as of yet, general consensus) among Semiticists is that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as "South Semitic", not as a branch in itself. All the Semitic languages of Ethiopia are classified (albeit not uncontroversially) as a distinct sub-branch of West Semitic, the Modern South Arabian languages are considered to form their own sub-branch of West Semitic, and all known remaining West Semitic languages for which a classification is possible are considered (in some cases, quite tentatively) to belong to Central Semitic.
The methodological basis for such an approach is that branching is based primarily (though not exclusively) on shared morphological innovations, as such things are deemed the best available indicator of the existence of a somewhat-discrete entity we can call a "language", in which such innovations do spread to eventual descending linguistic forms. It is possible to detect and reconstruct such innovations within West Semitic, within Central Semitic, and within several subgroupings therein (such as Northwest Semitic, and Aramaic and Canaanite within it, and Proto-Arabic). No shared innovation between Ethiopian and Modern South Semitic languages has been clearly individuated so far, all similarities between the two groups being attributable to shared retentions of older traits. Retentions have far less diagnostic value for branching (though they are still taken into account). So, South Semitic makes sense as a residual category (that bundle of branches of West Semitic that does not partake in Central Semitic innovative morphological patterns, esp. regarding verbal conjugations), what biologists would call a "paraphyletic" group.
Of course, the "branching" approach to historical linguistics cannot and should not be taken in isolation, especially in a context like Semitic languages, where we are actually dealing with dialect continua and relatively closely related linguistic forms in contact through long-standing geographical proximity and other factors (some varieties having long-standing and far-ranging prestige, for instance). So there is some room for nuance.
There is also a lot we simply do not know, or are just beginning to know, about a whole lot of things concerning both modern and ancient languages in the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa and their evolution.
EDIT: I suppose you were referring to the older three-branch distinction within Semitic, that recognized Northwest, Southwest (or South) and Northeast (or East) Semitic as the three major divisions of the family. This is a mainly geographical classification that uses linguistic features of different kinds (often phonological) and does not make consistent distinctions between innovations and retentions. I also believe this classification was influenced by non-linguistic factors (culture and racialist views). It used to be, however, the general branching consensus among Semiticists from the late nineteenth century to the seventies, when the shared innovations primary criterion was first productively deployed and quickly gained acceptance. (Arabic was considered a South Semitic language under this older view, albeit not without problems; knowledge of Ancient North Arabian languages was not advanced enough for serious classification work back then, while now we have a far more serious understanding of many of those*).
In any event, even under this outdated model, there was common agreement that the primary divide was between a (North-)Eastern branch and a Western one, the latter further divided into Northwest and South(-West). However, textbooks often tended to emphasise the tripartition even if the root binary division above was known and recognized by most.
However, even scholars who accept the validity of a "South Semitic" branch nowadays usually agree that:
1) Arabic does not belong to it, and in all likelihood neither does not Ancient South Arabian, nor any of those Ancient North Arabian varieties we understand enough (and possess data enough) to have a decent basis for classification.
2) South Semitic, if it is a valid, belongs to West Semitic (this last point has been accepted by almost everyone for over a century).

* And that's only the beginning. Seriously, when I started approaching the topic some fifteen years ago as an undergrad, I used manuals where there was no clue about them; now I can teach this sort of stuff and see my students find enough material online for in-depth discussions of secondary literature. Anyway, Ancient North Arabian is a mess, and what we do not understand about the maybe six or seven languages that used to be lumped under this name still far exceeds what we have begun to know in the last decade. Including half-undeciphered inscriptions by the thousands.
 
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Quite like the idea of a non-Hungarian Finno-Ugric Empire composed of Finland, Sami territories, Karelia, Kola peninsula as well as nearby non-contiguous territories like Estonia and possibly the western (Livonian+) part of Latvia (notwithstanding an ATL Helsinki to Tallinn Tunnel) roughly featuring similar population numbers to OTL Hungary.

Into historic times (end of first millennium AD), Baltic Finns (and their dialect continuum which includes Finnish and Estonian) spread pretty far into northern Russia. They'd need to push further south into where the Volga Finns (who spoke several distantly related Uralic languages) to have any real chance of being a power of global importance (basically replacing Russia). Otherwise you have a super Novgorod whose language would probably be closest to modern Ingrian (not quite extinct). "Finnic Russia" would guarantee speak a Uralic language which is now extinct.
 
Into historic times (end of first millennium AD), Baltic Finns (and their dialect continuum which includes Finnish and Estonian) spread pretty far into northern Russia. They'd need to push further south into where the Volga Finns (who spoke several distantly related Uralic languages) to have any real chance of being a power of global importance (basically replacing Russia). Otherwise you have a super Novgorod whose language would probably be closest to modern Ingrian (not quite extinct). "Finnic Russia" would guarantee speak a Uralic language which is now extinct.

Do not really envision it being a Finnic Russia analogue let alone a power of global importance, nonetheless it is interesting idea.
 
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